How We Fund our Sailing Life - Mr and MrsHowe Sustainable Travel Lifestyle

I received very good questions the other day from new readers 😀 Sharing my answer for the others who are also curious ✔️

“Don’t you miss the office and working? How do you fund this sailing lifestyle?”

Unlike what other people think, we still work while sailing! ⛵️

If you followed our old blog, Two Monkeys Travel, then you already know that we’ve been traveling the world full-time since 2013 and did a lot of different jobs to support our travels: taught English in Vietnam & Peru, sold coconut oils, donation-only yoga classes, Massage therapy & volunteering until 2015 when we started to go professional on travel blogging. Thru our blog, we got paid to go on different trips around the world aside from getting sponsors and advertisers! 😀

Last year, Jonathan and I decided to go sailing full-time and decided we’re no longer travel blogging to focus on the new chapter of our life. We adopted a cat as well so we’re definitely full-time liveaboards.⛵️👫

This time, we are funding this sailing life in different ways aside from the savings we made from our old blogging income & some investments.

INCOME SOURCE #1: I’ve started my TRAVEL COACHING/ MENTORING services late last year. I haven’t fully advertised it aside from FB but I have full appointment schedule and doing 15 to 20 hours per week (I only do it when I have internet) talking with clients who are usually coming to me thru referrals from my previous clients. Most of them are Pinays like me wanting to get Tourist Visa to USA, UK, Schengen, Australia, and others are just needing tips about life on the road.

After almost 5 years of traveling to 121 countries, I think I have enough experience to teach other people on what to do based on all the visa applications that I personally experienced including the hassle & techniques I did to get all the visa while traveling abroad (I now have 10yr UK visa, 10yr USA visa, 2 yrs Australia Visa, 1yr Schengen visa). Basically, I just teach them on how to DIY- applying the visa themselves without paying a huge amount to a visa agency that usually charge $500 or more to assist and process their visa applications.

I charge $75 per hour and most of them hire me for 2 to 4 hours of consultation. (Most of my success testimonials are from people like me and Jonathan on a mixed/ interracial relationship and that they want to be together!) I usually guide them on filling up application forms, how to answer during US consul interview, how to write a proper cover letter personalized to them, how to write invitation letters from sponsors and organizing the essential requirements for visa applications.

I think I have 80% success rate because they usually get their visa afterward and they are referring me to their family & friends.. maybe I’ll do more advertising in the future but for now, I’m happy to do 15 to 20 hours of coaching per week.

So Jonathan and I are using this source of income for our weekly expenses, visa expenses, boat expenses and some are being saved up for our boat’s yearly maintenance.

If you only need tips, I published articles here that are free to read and guide you

INCOME SOURCE #2: I partnered with a travel agency to offer the “rent-a-flight service” where I help fellow travelers with a confirmed flight reservation that is usually a requirement for visa applications. It’s legal since if you check the embassies, they only require a reservation and the usual way to have it is by getting it from registered travel agencies. I earn a commission from it but the income I earn from here is what we use to run our new Sailing blog -mrandmrshowe.com ⛵️

Yes, the articles you read on our are free for readers but it has a lot of costs to run the website professionally - taxes, our staff’s monthly salaries, hosting of website online, advertising, automated tools, Dropbox etc.

INCOME SOURCE #3: From advertisers & sponsors, unlike on our old travel blog.. we’re new in sailing so we haven’t get paid in cash from sponsors yet but we were able to get “free” products in exchange for us to personally try and use them during our trip. This is great because it helped us saved up money on our boat expenses which we were able to use to buy other boat parts. Eventually, I know that once we’re fully into this lifestyle, we will be able to partner with big brands. But for now, we’re just enjoying the freedom of not having to work for anyone.

Aside from different sources of income, as I said above, we also have some investments and savings to use ❤️

———-They said sailing full-time can be cheap since we don’t need to pay electricity, monthly bills etc. but we’re still on the part of our life where we are investing a lot of money and time to make our antique sailboat (she’s made in 1971) to a fully-functional liveaboard ❤️ She’s totally worth it! ❤️

Hope I answered your questions 🙏

P.S. One day I’ll make Captain Ahab a MEOWDEL so we can fund his cat food and cat litter. Kidding! ⛵️🤪